CONCERT Songs in the Key of Peace

Live duo concert – at long last.
An intimate evening of FREYjA Songs (new and old) in the key of Peace. Friday Feb 16 2024
The Folklore Rooms Brighton East Sussex, UK
Buy Tickets

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“Nina Simone’s Travelling Circus” A Drummer’s Tale

It is almost forever since I have blogged here. So much has happened I don’t quite know where to start. 

It’s been an extraordinary journey. I spent three transformative months in Greece. And almost four months in Australia. I left London a year and a half ago but I am there often.

I have finally completed Draft 9 of “Nina Simone’s Travelling Circus” co-authored with Paul Robinson about his 19 years touring with Nina. I continue to edit several memoirs and fictionalised memoirs for clients, two of which are on the road toward publication. I have ghost-written two books as well and completed First & Rough Drafts of two my own books. The London Book Fair was a true eye-opener. Felt greatly honoured to have two enormous works being repped there by agents.

An exciting time for me in the literary space but that’s not to say I have stopped writing songs. “The Furnace Recordings” will be released as soon as I find the right label and backing to complete the vocals and mix/master.

I will be back on stage soon so please keep following in all the usual corners of social media. There are some thrilling launches up ahead and I can’t wait to share the news. (Photo by Jolly Thompson).

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Lockdown Album “The Furnace Recordings”

I haven’t vanished!

The Lockdown Album is burning bright. But soon we’re going to need your help to keep the star of hope shining. So join the mailing list by emailing Contact

Listen Here:

THE FURNACE RECORDINGS

They can lockdown an artist’s body but never the spirit. It’s been a challenging time for us all. As an artist myself, I’ve always believed my mission is to inspire. To spread hope for peace and conciliation person to person, neighbour to neighbour, nation to nation, in any way I can. Through words and music. That’s my form of activism.

Now more than ever, we creatives need to gather our hopes for a better world together with our creative vision. I am thrilled to report, that despite the limitations and at times agonising confinement I have managed to complete two books, one album and my children’s musical.

The album is particularly close to my heart. We have recorded it together apart – in London, Cambridge, Madrid, Hertfordshire and Australia! Paul Robinson (Nina Simone for 20 years, Van Morrison and more) has produced it and provided his unique drumming style…that rare class and sensitivity which I have been honoured to work with for 12 years.

I am out of work and the savings are depleted. I will be running a Crowdfunding Campaign to keep going. So please be on the lookout.

If you are not already subscribed, then please do so. Via the above link, or contact us on Social Media links above top right. (Myspace & RSS Feed are currently under reconstruction) Comments below too. Let us hear from you!

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New! Song For The Siren

What a six months it’s been. Right? Tough on everyone, that’s for sure, but us creatives we  keep on keeping on. As the Nichiren Buddhists say: “Turn poison into medicine.”

For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing. I’ve finally finished one of my manuscripts. Yes! A novel I have been working on for over six years. Draft One of Tilting The Doll is completed.

What’s more, my new (mostly remotely) recorded album, The Furnace Recordings, is now eight songs in. Song For The Siren is my newest song. (link in photo or below) Producer/ Drummer Paul Robinson never ceases to astound me. He is a master at creating spellbinding worlds around a song. No doubt, this is just one of the many reasons Nina Simone loved working with him. I am honoured, as ever.

Humbled too by Luca Boscagin, who laid down the most perfect, emotive guitar tracks from his home studio.

The photo should link you to soundcloud where you can leave comments about the song. Let us know which artists it reminds you of. Emotions it evokes. Genres you feel it falls within. A song such as this will be pitched to several Licensing Companies around the world, in the hope that it will be exploited/placed in a series/ film/ ad. All your feedback is helpful for us to know where to aim it in our submissions to publishers etc.

More very soon. The muse is back. Stay creative, people. Dig deep and fill your lives with love, poetry and music. FREYjA
Song For The Siren

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Song To The Some in A World on Fire

As an Australian / British girl raised between Sydney and the Southern Highlands in NSW I grew up with horses. I used to ride through the bush amidst herds of kangaroos. That was my life. My holidays were spent surfing everywhere I could, up and down the coast, from Sydney to Byron Bay to QLD’s Sunshine Coast. I have family in Cairns, so even that part of the world means something to me. Deep in my heart, this land is my home.

Further south, on the border of NSW and Victoria, a town called Mallacoota meant a great deal to me. That town is now no more. It has burnt to the ground. It was filled with mud-brick houses of the most extraordinary architectural designs. Multi-coloured windows made out of the bottom of bottles. These people have lost their entire town. That place where I woke up on the deserted beach one morning in my sleeping bag as dolphins rode in on the waves.

Such is life in Australia. It is a land of wonder. Magic. Nature. Where earth and sea meet our spirits and sail, fly, ride with us. There is no spirit quite like an Australia spirit. Not for me, in any case. I love so much about that country. This is my prayer to you, this song: 

Song To The Some (From A Fellow Phoenix):

Though in truth
I am lost for words
here begins my
song to the some.
It’s all I have,
my prayer,
my meagre something,
my plea to The Power,
The Sum of Life,
for assurance that
everything will
somehow be ok.

That those who have
lost all will find some
glimmer in a clear-skyed tomorrow and beyond.
That some light,
by some miracle,
will emerge along the
cracks of your
scorched heartland,
despite the dream-now-embers,
still so hot to the touch.
Despite despite despite.

You cannot yet imagine
the gum shoots which will
surely burst out from
this ashen landscape.
Yet yet yet.
Cannot imagine welcoming
that spiteful sunlight
upon your lawn,
not whilst under this shadow, this billowing tornado of fire.
Yet yet yet.

So let us imagine,
on your behalf,
that one day soon,
in this life,
somehow,
some way,
the crackle will go quiet,
the air float through,
a new home emerge
sure as the phoenix.

To the some of you,
my fellow surfing sunners,
my eucalypt babies,
my laughing tree-swoopers
pouncing scraggle bush fairies, swept up in this
war with the elements;
from the sum of us to
your so many somes,
this is my meagre offering
🌷
Song By Rebecca Rennie FREYjA

 

© FREYjA R Rennie January 2020 

(Photo by )

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Lady Amazon

 
New song (work in progress only – still unmixed) for FREYjA’s new album “The Furnace Recordings”. Thanks to the incomparable Producer + Drummer Paul Robinson – this song has been through many incarnations. I first wrote it in the 90s. After I returned from living in Ecuador for six months. I was already upset about what we were doing to the Amazon back then…now look at us! what on earth? who do we think we are? Kings of the Universe? (Title of another angry FREYjA song)

I used to sing this song live with folk blues guitarist Murray Wall at our weekly residency at Zanzibar in Sydney. The song has evolved since then of course … as has the damage we have done to one of the most beautiful and irreplaceable, natural masterpieces on our planet.

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Ode to Anniversaries


This new song makes eleven in as many months, after a ten year gap of no songwriting at all. I wrote it on the 11th August after two weeks of trying to track down someone close who went awol and also going through the anniversary of something else a little sad.

I wonder what they conjure up for you, these images. I prefer it resonates with your own private stories (which is what songwriting should be able to do) but I know it can be fascinating to know why and how an artist writes a particular story, perhaps then it will touch an even deeper nerve. I will share a little with you.

Yes, it is about death, loss, grief…a ghost is speaking from the other side…but death can be the loss of a friendship or a viewpoint or a lifestyle. It can also be the birth of a new – not necessarily welcome – perspective on a journey with someone you thought was going one way, when it takes a sharp turn or you reach a new understanding about your own or someone else’s limitations.

The child in this song is a victim of war. My mother lived during the bombings of Berlin. Both my parents lost their Dads in the war, in the same year, on different sides of the battle. I still feel the tremors of that within my family all these years later, for the damage which was done within both my Dad’s and my Mutti’s hearts was profound. WWII lives on believe me. All the refugees from our current days crises in the world will bear scarred children too.

The bombing of Dresden too has always haunted me, ever since reading Kurt Vonnegut. That is where ‘and so it goes’ comes from. I look forward to recording this one. It came to me very quickly. It started with a classical Bach-like Fugue and transformed into a living organism for me. Within about two hours it was fait de complit.

Death’s Anniversaries:
1
And so it goes, another year
It doesn’t matter any more
It doesn’t show, it wasn’t here
It wasn’t here at all
2

And so it goes, another child
Beneath a circus carousel
She barely heard the sound
Before she hit the ground
And all the horses fell

Chorus
All these roses, all those thorns
All those fairy-tales
And loves gone wrong
Who wants to carry these flowers for me?
See, the grave lies empty
But the kite flies over
And it’s always something’s
anniversary.

3
And so it blows, you watch time fall
Or try to catch it in your hand
I let it soar and blow some more
You never know where it might land.

4
It’s not so bad, outside the walls
Though no-one stays here long
It ain’t a world for souls like hers
The not so very strong

Chorus
All these roses, all those thorns
All those fairy-tales
And loves gone wrong
Who wants to carry these flowers for me?
See, the grave lies empty
But the kite flies over
And it’s always something’s
anniversary.
© FREYjA R Rennie 2019 August

(Photo by Sasha Damjanovski)

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FREYjA’s Song Showcase


FREYjA played live in London at long last in June. As many of you know, I had not been on stage with my original material since my darling Pa passed. Things sure can knock the wind out of your sails. Well, it had been too long!

I sang just four songs at piano with a cellist, Maria Rodriguez Reina, in a showcase at The Bedford www.thebedford.com in South London. The very same venue where Ed Sheehan started his career. We were very blessed to have Stewart Darrietta hop on stage to play and sing Hallelujah at the end and all the artists who sang that night got up and harmonised. Steward was in London on his way to Edinburgh, where he plays to his annual sellout audiences My Leonard Cohen.

That little performance with Mars wass a teaser to a series of up-coming concerts FREYjA will be performing with full band at a number of venues in town soon. New album, The Furnace Recordings, is bubbling away in the cauldron. So watch this space, my friends. 

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How to Write a Song

ONE WEEK AT A TIME. Day Two: How to Write a Song:

This is the age, for my generation, of parents passing over to the other side. A sad time filled with heavy-hearts, long farewells and sudden traumatising news.

I’m trying to get to Australia to see my mother but it’s just not that simple…nor that affordable…nor perhaps, so imperative…yet…

I have several friends who are  watching a loved one let go, and it makes me realise that these words ‘yet’ and ‘perhaps’ have become code for ‘inevitable’…

…and so i entitle my next song ‘Yet’.

I close my eyes and wrap my heart around the word ‘yet.’ I play one chord on the piano but it doesn’t match how I feel. So I reach for another and am surprised to find that it is a major chord, not a minor chord, which resonates with this word for this song…

The rest of the song writes itself…as if sent straight through a channel from who knows where…our lost loved ones perhaps…
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